Saturday, March 11, 2006

The Relay Queen! Right now, I've got two teams going - one for the Mt. Si 57 mile relay and I just signed our team up for this year's Rainier to Pacific. I also plan to participate in a relay for Rainier to Ruston 50 miler in June, and hopefully the United We Run 26.2 mile relay again next November. The Mt. Si Relay is new to me this year, I ran in all the others last year.

One of my running friends asked me why I wanted to do so many relays. She thought the logistics of relays made them kind of a hassle. She's right, sometimes it can be tough to pull it all together, but the sheer fun of riding in a van with sweaty runners and cheering each other on makes it worth it. But the real reason is plain old participation. Since I've been told not to run longer than an hour, running in a relay gives me the feel and the challenge of a longer race. For R2P in particular, it gives Eric and I a race to work on together. Eric runs on a competitive Hood to Coast team, and could easily choose to do that for R2P, but figures this is one he can do for fun with me. We make sure we are assigned to the same van when we enter a relay so we can spend the time together. It works well for us. Our R2P team is a nice mix of ages, from 25 to 55, men and women, fast and slow. It was a blast last year and should be again this year. I'll miss having Rob run the 1:00 am leg with me, but have been encouraging Eric to give it a shot. I know this adds a fourth leg, but hey! Eric has run a 50 miler, adding one little five mile leg shouldn't hurt too much. Right, Eric?

I did get out and run on Thursday, and I gotta say, I don't know how mid-afternoon runners do it. Running in the early morning is so much easier! I ran over to the first park and did two laps (about .9 mile per lap, one mile round trip to get there and back), then ran into the house and got the dog, Sundae, to run with me. We ran another half mile to the second park (the one we usually walk through) and ran the back loop and back home. I think it was about 5 miles. We stopped to chat with a neighbor in the park for a couple of minutes, and I walked up a couple of the steeper hills on the backside. My legs felt heavy and my heart rate was up and my chest was tight. I'm not sure why, other than a different time of day than I'm used to. It convinced me I have to get this gall bladder decision over with and tackle the two-a-days soon to be relay-ready.

This morning I ran for an hour and six minutes and felt great. I ran with four others from the Run Club at a perfect pace. Once we finished, we headed right over for coffee where we overflowed the big table and took over an entire corner. Rob lifted weights this morning instead of running, and joined us for coffee. Amy and Tim also joined us with two week old Kyle for his inaugral Run Club coffee. Tomorrow we're heading to the Soos Creek Trail to run. We usually start at the southern trailhead and run north - it's about 4 miles. This time we'll change it up and start at the northern trailhead. Should be fun!